


I Concentrate On You

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Noir, Angst, Captivity, Comfort Sex, Consensual Underage Sex, F/F, Girls Kissing, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, Lesbian Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Underage Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:53:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1922.  Aboard the U.S.S. Mount Weather, Lorelei Tsing and her gang of thugs have kidnapped six wealthy girls from all over the country and are keeping them captive inside the ship's cargo hold.  When South Carolina heiress Nell Harper wakes up on a pile of burlap sacks, she's alone in the dark and frightened.  Three weeks later, a red-haired mobster's daughter from Boston is thrown into the cargo hold with her, and everything changes . . .</p><p>Spinoff of the Kabby/Bellarke/Linctavia film noir AU "The Seventh Heiress."  http://archiveofourown.org/works/4323858</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Concentrate On You

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Seventh Heiress](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4323858) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin). 



> THE MISSING HEIRESSES  
> (Information taken from police dossier files of Lieutenant Bellamy Blake)  
> _______________________
> 
> NAME: Nell Harper  
> AGE: 16  
> MISSING SINCE: January 25, 1922  
> TAKEN FROM: Charleston, South Carolina  
> PERSONAL ASSETS: heiress to Harper's Hatpins, Ltd.
> 
> NAME: Molly Monroe  
> AGE: 19  
> MISSING SINCE: February 12, 1922  
> TAKEN FROM: Boston, Massachusetts  
> PERSONAL ASSETS: daughter of Irish mob boss
> 
> NAME: Anya Arbor  
> AGE: 18  
> MISSING SINCE: April 10, 1922  
> TAKEN FROM: Portland, Oregon  
> PERSONAL ASSETS: heiress to Arbor Logging Incorporated
> 
> NAME: Lexa Arbor  
> AGE: 16  
> MISSING SINCE: April 18, 1922  
> TAKEN FROM: Portland, Oregon  
> PERSONAL ASSETS: heiress to Arbor Logging Incorporated
> 
> NAME: Charlotte Cooper  
> AGE: 10  
> MISSING SINCE: May 5, 1922  
> TAKEN FROM: Norfolk, Virginia (visiting)  
> PERSONAL ASSETS: daughter of Texas oil baron
> 
> NAME: Maya Vie  
> AGE: 15  
> MISSING SINCE: June 29, 1922  
> TAKEN FROM: San Francisco, California  
> PERSONAL ASSETS: inherited Montana cattle ranch

Nell Harper is afraid of the dark.

At home, she doesn't mind it.  At home, in her frilly white bedroom in Charleston, she turns on the tiny lamp on her bedside table every night before she goes to sleep and lets its rosy light filter out into the room, and when she closes her eyes the light makes her feel safe.

She has never told anyone this. Not out loud.  She is, after all, sixteen years old and her parents are two of the wealthiest people in the country, the sort of unyielding, domineering folk with ice water in their veins who fear nothing except the stock market and other rich people’s opinions.  Her childish fears would shame them.  So the lamp on the bedside table is simply one more on the long list of things they don't discuss. 

But this place, wherever it is, this darkness is different.  There's no lamp, no soft rose-colored glow.  There's a weak little shaft of moonlight coming in from someplace high up, and a sick greenish luminescence from the bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling in the hallway outside, which she can see very faintly through the dirty round window in the door.  That's all.  Only two patches of light, in the whole room.

It's a big space, drafty and cold and damp, and she can't see into the shadowy corners, and she smells rotting fish, and she's lying on a heap of scratchy burlap sacks full of old root vegetables and garbage.

She squeezes her eyes shut, shivering in her silky beaded party dress, and tries to remember.

The first thing that happened was an envelope slipped under the front door, addressed to her.  A party invitation, on heavy cream-and-gold paper.  She doesn't recognize the address, it seems to be some old warehouse down by the docks.  _How marvelous,_ she thinks to herself.  _How thrilling._ But Daddy and Mama would never let her go, so of course she has to sneak out.  She's tiptoeing through the shadows on the dark streets when a woman in red pulls over on the side of the road and says, "Is there any chance you're headed to that party down by the docks?"  Nell tells her yes.  "Jump in," says the woman cheerfully.  "I'll give you a ride.  My name's Lorelei."  And she's so pretty, with her red frock and silky dark hair, and Nell doesn't want to arrive at a dance party with feet already sore, so she jumps in next to the woman in the front seat and watches Charleston speed by.  She thinks she's off on an adventure, she thinks there's champagne and dancing waiting for her at the end of this road, and that maybe something will finally happen to her, or some _one_ will finally happen to her.  She dreams of a dark-haired man with a moustache like you see in the pictures, a man who will pull her close and give her her first real kiss and whisk her away from her cold-eyed, disapproving parents so she can be free.  Because Tuesday was her birthday and she's come into her inheritance and now she has so much money she could go anywhere that wasn’t Charleston, South Carolina and be anyone who wasn’t Nell Harper, daughter of Donovan and Millie Harper, heiress to the Harper’s Hatpins fortune.

She's so busy gazing out the window at the dark streets, thinking of the imaginary man with the moustache, that she doesn't smell the chloroform. And then she wakes alone in the darkness.

Nell spends the first night piled on a heap of burlap sacks, curled up in the watery patch of light on the floor where the moon streams in from the high window.  It's cold and she doesn't have a coat and the floor is slimy and the fish smell turns her stomach, and she cries herself to sleep.

Food arrives on a tray slid through a gap in the door the next morning, along with a metal bucket whose vile purpose she understands immediately. They come back for the tray, but not the bucket, and the smell begins to make her ill.  More ill, even, than the food, which is a cold, congealed pile of something that might once have been beef stew.  She tries to eat it, but vomits it back up almost immediately.  All she can keep down is the tin cup of water.  Later, when the sun begins to set, there's another tray, same as the first.  

She cries for the first three days and nights.

Her tears dry up and turn into anger by the fourth day. She tries pounding on the door. She tries screaming. But no one comes – not even to shush her, to beat her, to pound back on the other side of the door and threaten her to keep her voice down. The trays of food continue to arrive twice a day like clockwork. Nell would rather have been punished with starvation; the undisturbed routine is more sinister.

It makes her wonder if the shouting is fruitless because wherever she is, there is no one close enough to hear her.

She thinks she might be starting to go mad.  There is no one to talk to.  There is nothing to do.  When the sun is bright enough in the sky to penetrate the grimy, high window and shed a few scraps of light, she explores the room, and tidies up as much as she can.  There are piles of burlap sacks and crates everywhere, and she sorts through them, dividing the garbage (which she piles in one far corner) from the things she can use.  She fashions a rough bed out of the burlap sacking.  She ignores the voice in the back of her mind that hisses at her to make this place as comfortable as she can, since she will almost certainly die here.

Alone.

By the end of the first week, she actually misses her mother.

By the end of the second, she wishes she were dead.

She considers it rather seriously.  She considers the burlap sacks, which might make a sturdy enough rope to be useful, if braided into strips.  She considers the pile of old crates, which she could stack high enough to reach a place on the wall where an old iron hook juts out.  She considers the woman in red, and who she might be working for, or what she might want with Nell, and all the other things that might be more terrible than a quick clean death by rope.  She considers the fact that she has legal ownership of her own fortune now and yet nobody has asked her for money.  She considers that either nobody has asked her parents for ransom, either, or her parents have decided not to pay it; otherwise she would not have been locked up in this cold room for sixteen days. 

She begins tearing the burlap sacking into strips.  It takes a long time, but she is in no hurry.  She goes slow.  She is careful.  The rope has to hold. 

The rope is the only thing left in Nell Harper's life that actually matters.

Then, on the eighteenth day, everything changes.

By now, Nell's whole world has shrunk down to the size of the burlap strips she is braiding together, the damp chill she can never seem to shake off, and the intervals between the morning and evening meals which have become the way she tracks the days and tells time. In between, she has never once heard a single noise to indicate the presence of human life. But Day 18 is different. On Day 18, she hears the sounds of a violent struggle, shouting voices, and then suddenly the door flies open.

 _My parents have found me,_ thinks Nell, her heart soaring, and she leaps to her feet, but the brief flicker of hope flames out almost immediately as she finds herself faced with half a dozen armed men pointing guns at her head.

“We don’t want to hurt you, Nell,” says the woman in red as she makes her way through the crowd.  Her voice is soothing and calm. “But I’m going to ask you to sit down on the ground with your hands in your lap and not make any sudden movements. Can you do that for me?”

Nell stopped screaming at the door a week and a half ago, and hasn’t spoken since. She tries to form the word “yes” but her throat won’t cooperate, so instead she nods. Then the source of the disturbance makes itself clear. Two huge, hulking men enter the cargo hold, and it’s taking all their strength to hold onto the squirming, punching, kicking shape inside a burlap sack that they’re lugging over their shoulders. They toss it unceremoniously onto the pile in the corner, on top of the other sacks where Harper makes her bed, and then the door slams shut again.

“Fucking fuck _fuck_ ,” she hears a muffled voice coming from inside the burlap sack, and in all her life Nell Harper has never been more grateful to hear that word.

She is still in the dark, but she is not alone.

The rope and the hook and the swift clean escape are all forgotten.  She scrabbles over the cold metal floor to the burlap sack and struggles to open it, her soft hands scraped raw by the rough fabric. “Hold still,” she tries to say to the cursing, flailing shape, but still no words come. Her throat has forgotten what it feels like to speak and can only emit a faint rasp, hardly audible over the swearing. Finally she untangles the knot and pulls open the sack.

It’s a girl.

A furious girl with matted red hair, a dapper black suit torn nearly to shreds, and a baleful glare on her face.

“The fuck are you?” she asks Nell suspiciously, and Nell can’t help it. She throws her arms around the girl's neck and buries her face in her red hair.

 _You saved my life,_ she says silently, and she never thinks about the hook on the wall again.

* * *

Nell Harper is a Southern belle, a magnolia blossom, the kind of girl raised to sit quietly on covered porches and sip sweet tea in a white dress. Nobody taught her to fight, to endure, to be strong. She was meant to be some rich man’s wife. That was what Daddy and Mama wanted for her. That was all anyone ever told her to be.

She has never met anyone like Molly Monroe.

Molly is from Boston and Boston is another world. Molly comes from people who bribe cops and run smuggled liquor and dabble in theft and murder. She’s been to more knife fights than Nell has cotillions, and she was bred to survive. Yet she doesn’t make Nell feel ashamed of her fear. She sees the pile of half-braided burlap strips, she puts two and two together, but she doesn’t blame Nell or judge her; she seems, rather, impressed that Nell made it nearly three weeks all alone in this smelly cave without losing her mind.

When her out-of-practice vocal chords finally relent and she can speak again, she tells Molly everything, and they realize their stories are identical. An invitation to a party given by some long-lost friend, delivered mysteriously with no stamp. An isolated meeting place, that beautiful woman in red offering a ride in her car. Then the chloroform and the burlap sack.

Except Molly Monroe is a mobster's daughter and she didn't fall for it.  She declined the ride and kept walking, so she smelled the chloroform coming and punched out the man, crouched in the backseat of the car, who tried to smother her with it.  She took a blow to the back of the head for her troubles, to knock her out the old-fashioned way, and she came to as they were carrying her inside.  Which explains both the violent struggle at the doorway, and the fact that she noticed a few important things Nell missed.

Nell had not realized, for example, that they are on board a ship.

You can't feel the movement of the water three floors down in the cargo hold, Molly explains to her, which means the ship is big, and slow-moving.  A cargo freighter, most likely.  She'd been carried up a rickety gangplank from a floating wooden dock, and she'd heard foghorns, seagulls, and splashing.  And she's a Monroe.  She knows the particular smell of the Boston docks.

“They want us alive for some reason,” Molly says. “A ship’s a great way to sneak someone out of a city with no trace. The question is, why us, and where are we going?”

“And will there be more,” adds Nell.

They talk all night long. It begins as a way to compare stories about their lives, to see if they can find any common thread that might link them to the woman in red and their mysterious kidnappers, but soon it turns into something much simpler.

Human contact.

A way to hold back the darkness.

Molly Monroe is the rose-colored lamp on her bedside table, and for the first time since she woke up in this terrible place, Nell begins to feel some stirrings of hope in her breast that maybe, just maybe, she is not weak. That she is more than a magnolia blossom, more than a soft white gossamer thing or a piece of breakable china.  That maybe she is the kind of person who can survive this.

“You don’t look like a Molly,” she says dubiously as the red-haired girl spreads out her torn suit jacket over the pile of burlap sacks so they can lay side-by-side and pillow their heads on something soft.  The jacket smells like woodsmoke and rosemary and Harper sinks blissfully into it.

“Nobody back home calls me that,” says the girl, curling up next to her. “Everyone just calls me ‘that motherfucking Monroe kid.’ Monroe for short.”

“Do you like that better?”

“Much.”

“Hello, Monroe,” she says, their faces now just inches apart from each other. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“You haven’t told me your name,” Monroe says suddenly, and Nell realizes with a start that it's true.

Nell is her great-grandmother’s name. Grandmother Nell wears ropes of long white pearls and gloves to her elbow and used to sit on Mama’s white wicker furniture looking disdainfully over her gold-framed glasses every time little Nell ran too fast or tore her dress or spoke too loudly or contradicted her elders. “Be a lady like your Grandmother Nell,” her mother was always telling her.  "Now what would Grandmother Nell say if she heard you talk like that?"

 _Fuck her,_ she imagines Monroe saying disdainfully, and a bubble of joyous laughter rises up inside her breast, along with an entirely unexpected sensation of lightness.  Weightlessness.  The casting-off of something oppressive and heavy.

She is a prisoner, really and truly, for the first time in her life – locked inside a stinking, cold metal box – yet she’s never felt this free.

 _I don’t_ want _to be Grandmother Nell_ , she thinks. _I never wanted that. I only thought I did because everyone else told me so. I want to be_ myself. _I don’t know who that is yet, but I’ll find it._

“Call me Harper,” she says to Monroe.

* * *

For weeks and weeks, it’s just the two of them.  Monroe is tough and the guards are a little afraid of her, because they know she’s not scared to make trouble. So little by little, she finds ways to make life a little easier. She gets them to empty the chamber pot, for example, instead of simply leaving it to stink in the corner. "Your bosses want us alive," she calls through the door to the men who deliver the food trays, "which means if we die you'll all lose your jobs.  Besides, you're touching the food trays we pass back to you, which means if we get sick we could infect this whole ship."  Then she gets them to pry open the porthole window high up in the cargo hold’s walls – too small and too high to escape, but enough to ventilate the space just the tiniest bit, to let fresh cold sea air flow in little by little to ease the rotten-fish smell.  They send in three men one day - two with guns and one with a mop - and while the armed men hold Harper and Monroe in the corner to keep them from trying to escape, the other one mops up the fish gut slime that covers the cold metal floor, and takes away the heap of rotting garbage Harper piled neatly in the corner when she first arrived.  Monroe gets them to bring a bucket of clean water and a cloth so they can wash every few days, and real bedrolls with blankets. (They’re not much, but they’re better than burlap sacks of old potatoes.)  Apparently she has convinced the guards - or the woman in red - that a few basic precautions around their prisoner's health and hygiene are in everyone's best interest.  Even the food, though still unappetizing, sometimes arrives almost hot.

Monroe makes everything better.  And it's a comfort to Harper, knowing that whoever is holding them inside this ship does, actually, want them alive.  At least for now.  Every morning when their food trays arrive marks another day that she and Monroe will not die. 

The most sinister thing in the room, though, is the bedrolls.

The guards have delivered six of them.

“There are more girls coming,” Harper tells Monroe in a tone of foreboding, and Monroe nods.

“We’ll keep them safe,” she says to Harper. “We’ll be ready. All of us. Whatever comes, we’re going to get through this together.”

They stack the bedrolls together that night, and pile all six blankets on top of their bodies. It’s the first time in weeks they’ve been warm. But they’ve gotten used to sleeping curled up together, so even though they don’t need each other’s body heat anymore, they lie down together anyway. They’ve gotten in the habit of sleeping in their underwear, pressing skin to skin for warmth as they shiver under the burlap sacks, but it’s different now. The cold of the damp metal floor can’t seep through the bedrolls; the slimy fish smell is gone, the blankets smell pleasantly of cedarwood, and it’s almost like being in a real bed.

Harper likes the way it feels when Monroe wraps her arms around her. She feels safe, comfortable, almost happy. They are prisoners, but they are alive, which means somebody needs something from them, which means that when Monroe promises they’ll find a way out of this, Harper believes her. Monroe is hope, resilience, courage. Monroe arrived just when Harper was beginning to give up, and she woke everything back up again. The old frightened Nell is gone. Now she’s someone new. Now she’s Harper, and Harper is strong.

Monroe wraps her arms around Harper’s waist and pulls her close, their foreheads nearly touching. Harper closes her eyes and feels her heart begin to pound in her chest. She is suddenly so aware of Monroe’s skin, Monroe’s breath, and a feeling begins to sweep through her that she can’t define.

The girl she used to be - Nell, the soft dainty creature, the magnolia blossom - patiently tolerated it when boys held her hand or tried to get close to her.  She did not permit them to kiss her; she could simply say that she was a young lady and kissing a boy wasn't proper, and then they'd slink away, leaving her sighing with relief.  She can't understand why all her friends are so wild for boys to kiss them.  She has always been spectacularly uninterested in it, awaiting with dread the day when her excuses about propriety ran out and she would really have to let some strange boy touch her mouth with his own.  She liked watching it when she went to the pictures, but feels cold all over thinking of a boy doing that to her.  She wonders if she's defective in some way, broken maybe, because of how hard it is to pretend like she really wants all the things she's _supposed_ to want but doesn't.

But Monroe's palm pressed flat against her back sends heat throughout her whole body and she abruptly realizes, with a violent pounding in her heart, that she _does_ want it. 

She wants it with Monroe.

_She wants Monroe to kiss her._

She opens her eyes and sees Monroe looking straight at her, and she realizes that Monroe wants it too. But Monroe is gallant, respectful. She won’t push. She won’t cross this line. She’s three years older and she’s appointed herself Harper’s protector and she wants to make Harper feel safe.

Harper will have to ask for what she wants, because Monroe will not go where she hasn't been invited.

So Harper reaches a trembling hand around Monroe’s waist and runs her fingertips lightly up and down the girl’s bare back.  “I’m so glad you’re here,” she whispers to Monroe, who closes her eyes and moves nearer, breathes her in, and she hopes it's enough, she hopes Monroe knows what she really means.

“I’m so glad I’m here too,” Monroe whispers back, and then it happens.

Monroe’s mouth is soft and warm and gentle, and it’s just a light brush of contact at first, innocent and full of affection. The kiss says _I care about you._ The kiss says _I am so glad I am holding you in my arms, and if there is nothing more between us than this kiss that would be enough for me._ But it also says _If you want more I will give you whatever you desire._

Harper’s mouth opens just a little bit beneath Monroe’s, and the kiss she gives back says to Monroe, _I want things I am only now just beginning to understand._

They kiss for a long time, their bodies so close that Harper can feel Monroe's heart pounding too, and it's like being under a magic spell, the way the tiniest movement of Monroe's lips against hers sends shivers through her whole body.  Harper can feel the kiss everywhere.  It echoes through her from head to toe and sends a wave of heat rushing into a part of her body where she's never felt such heat before.

One of Monroe’s hands begins to move from Harper’s bare back to slide across her hip and then down to the threadbare silk of her underthings, and she begins to feel her whole body catch fire. She didn’t know to ask for this, but as soon as it happens she realizes it's exactly what she wants and Monroe knows it.

Monroe pulls out of the kiss long enough to look at her. Her eyes ask an unspoken question, as her fingers slide inside the fabric. Harper nods breathlessly.  Monroe doesn’t kiss her again, just looks at her. She’s watching. She’s checking to make sure this is all right. Her hands move ever-so-slightly against Harper’s soft skin, touching places no one has ever touched – not even Harper, who knows very little about what happens between boys and girls in bed but has dimly absorbed enough to understand that for anyone but your husband to touch you here (even yourself) is desperately wrong and wicked.

But that was before. That was when she was Nell.

Now she’s Harper. And Harper _wants_ Monroe to touch her there, to keep touching her there, to keep doing whatever this strange mysterious thing is that she’s doing that makes Harper’s whole body light up. The flickering of pleasure ignites into a flame, and then into a raging bonfire, as Monroe’s gentle, deft fingers stroke and caress her, and then something inexplicable happens, a rush of sensation like a tidal wave overtakes her and she can’t stop herself from making a soft sobbing sound, a sigh that sounds like pain but is really pleasure and amazement and wonder and gratitude and surprise.

Monroe kisses her again, and Harper opens her mouth hungrily to draw her in.

“Will you teach me?” she whispers under the covers. “Will you teach me how to do that to you?”

Monroe nods, eyes dark and shining.

“Did you like that?” she asks Harper softly, almost shyly, and Harper smiles back at her.

“More than anything.”

* * *

Harper does not like the Arbor girls.

By the time they show up – one, then the other, a little over a week apart – Harper has been living inside this metal box for close to three months, and Monroe two. Anya and Lexa Arbor are cousins, and keep to themselves. They are civil, but not talkative. They watch and listen, and they appear to determine that Monroe is the one in charge – because she’s the one who the guards negotiate with – and so Anya develops a frosty truce with Monroe. Neither of them say much, though, and almost never to Harper.

“How does it work with the food?” Anya asks Monroe, or “Were you both taken from Portland too?”

Lexa says nothing. She has retreated inside herself. Harper would like to reach out – she tries, sometimes, to be kind – but Lexa has nothing to say to her.

Harper thinks she knows why the Arbor girls dismiss her. She thinks they can still smell a whiff of magnolia blossom. Monroe is wiry and compact, and keeps her red hair braided away from her face. She’s traded the guards her suit jacket for a men’s white t-shirt which she wears with the black pants she came in with. She looks sturdy and tough. Harper wears a shapeless gray dress she found in one of the long-forgotten crates in the corners of the cargo hold; it looks like it might once have been a maid’s uniform. Harper wears it gratefully, and washes it when they bring in the buckets of hot water for them to rinse out their undergarments and their hair and clothes. The dress is faded and old, but she keeps it as clean as she can.  And she cares about her hair, she washes it twice a week and keeps it neat with a half-broken old wooden comb she scavenged up from a pile of trash. 

But sometimes, every once in awhile, she can’t help it, she puts her beaded gown back on. Sometimes, just for a few minutes, she wants to feel like Nell again. Monroe likes the way the dress looks on her. Monroe doesn’t care that the beads are falling off or that the soft powder-blue fabric is dingy with dust and turning gray. (Harper can’t waste hot water washing the beaded dress, when all four of them have to share one bucket for all their laundry. It wouldn’t be fair.)  Monroe’s eyes caress her up and down when she puts it on, and she likes the way the silk feels on her skin but she likes the way Monroe’s eyes feel too.

This, she thinks, is why the Arbor girls don’t take her seriously. Monroe looks like she’s made of iron, while Harper looks like she’s made of silk. The Arbors are tall and strong and practical and when Harper puts on her graying beaded dress they look at her like she’s delusional.

It goes on like this for several days, and Harper begins to resent them. The little bit of peace and contentment she has carved out in her captivity comes from being alone with Monroe. They talk, they laugh, they share stories. They curl up under their blankets and whisper about what they will do first once they're free. (Monroe wants a steak dinner. Harper wants a bath.) They kiss and kiss and kiss. Monroe keeps her promise and teaches Harper how to do the thing she did when she slipped her fingers inside Harper’s silk underthings. She shows Harper, gently guiding her hand, how to do it to herself, and then how to do it to her. And then, once they have that skill quite mastered, Monroe shows her how to do it another way entirely, a way that's like being kissed between the legs but somehow even better, and Harper almost faints from how good it feels when the tidal wave finally rushes over her. So Monroe teaches her that too. And even though she's always cold, and she misses home, and every time the food tray came she's afraid the door will open to reveal the men with guns aiming them at her heart,  a part of her is genuinely happy.

But then, on Day 75, the door opens and the guards enter with a motionless shape in their arms and toss Anya down onto the heap of burlap sacking, and her anger is so palpable that it sends a chill through the already-cold space. She is angry at everyone. She hates everything. She’s so furious at whoever took her that she sits all day and night, quietly glowering at the door, watching and waiting for some kind of weakness. Waiting to strike, like a cobra.

Harper is afraid to let Monroe touch her after Anya arrives. She’s embarrassed of those soft little noises she makes when Monroe touches her, she doesn’t want this strange cold girl to hear them. So she pulls her bedroll away from Monroe’s that first night. _Girls aren’t supposed to share beds_ , says the voice in her head that used to be Nell. _It’s not proper._ So she shivers alone on her bedroll and can’t quite look Monroe in the eye the next morning. For the next week, all three of them are miserable. Harper hasn’t felt this desolate since she first woke up in this room.

Then the door opens again.

Lexa thought her cousin was dead, and the only flash of raw emotion they ever see from her is upon first waking up and realizing Anya is alive and safe. From that moment on, the two of them are an island unto themselves. It’s good. It restores the balance, somewhat. The cousins make a bed for themselves in one far corner, sensibly deciding to pair up for warmth; and so, after all, Harper decides there's nothing to stop her from going back to share with Monroe.  Though she’s still sometimes timid about letting Monroe do the thing with her mouth – it feels so magnificent that it's too hard for Harper to keep quiet, and she feels awkward about the Arbors listening.

(Monroe understands this without having to be told. Monroe never has to be told anything.)

But it feels so good to be back in Monroe’s arms again, it feels so good to curl up underneath the blankets with her, their foreheads touching, their whispered voices sending goosebumps up and down each other’s soft skin, their lips touching lightly and delicately before dissolving into hungry urgent kisses. It feels so good when Monroe slips her hand between Harper’s warm thighs and Harper reaches down to touch her in the same place and as their eyes adjust to the darkness under the blankets they watch each other begin to tremble as the tidal wave comes to sweep them away.

That first night after Harper comes back to her bed, Monroe is particularly attentive, and everything feels wonderful. Harper was what Grandmother Nell referred to as “an early bloomer,” which means that by sixteen she already has a woman’s body, with full breasts and a curved waist. It was a curse, before, back when she was Nell. Men looked at her breasts when they spoke to her, everywhere she went, even in church, and boys at school said things when she walked by that she was glad she couldn’t hear. What little she learned as a girl about marriage seemed to encourage her to see this body as the future property of some man who would claim it, the way she dimly remembers history book pictures of explorers claiming land in the New World for their kings and queens, even though people already lived there. Monroe loves Harper’s full, soft breasts too, loves running her hands over the sloping white curves of her body, but there’s no greed, no possession. Nothing but pure wonderment. Sometimes Monroe even takes them inside her mouth, flicking her tongue against the firm, rosy little nipples, and Harper wonders how it’s possible that no one ever told her how good it feels when a girl kisses you there.

Monroe makes Harper feel things all over her body.  But she doesn't realize until later what the other thing is she's feeling for the first time - the thing that has nothing to do with the warm place between her legs or the soft swell of her white breasts.  The thing that is located in the most secret depths of her being, in a place too deep to touch.

It begins badly, with Anya being rude.

Lexa wakes up with a slight fever, and Anya, tending her in the corner, is even more short-tempered and irritable than usual. Harper, who is feeling charitable because Monroe did the thing with her mouth again last night and left her so blissfully sated that they both slept like newborns, gives up washing her hair even though it’s her usual day so that Anya can have the bucket of cold water at her side and switch out the cold compress she’s making on Lexa’s forehead.

“I can help,” she says to Anya from across the room, surprising them both. Harper knows a little bit about nursing; not much, but enough.  She wants to bathe Lexa’s wrists in cold water along with her forehead and feet, to bring the fever down. Anya does not immediately reject her offer, which is progress. Encouraged, she moves closer, towards the bed where Anya tends her cousin. Anya turns and looks back at her with an expression that is almost neutral – almost tolerant – before she registers that Harper is wearing her beaded dress again.

“Go away,” she snaps to Harper, who halts midway across the room and stares, baffled.

“I just want to help,” she says.

“We don’t need your help.”

“Easy,” says Monroe, who’s over in the corner washing out her clothes in the hot water bucket.

Anya ignores her. “You’re a silly little girl in a silly little dress,” she says. “You’re worse than useless.  You're nothing.”

Harper hates herself almost as much as she hates Anya in that moment, because she can’t keep herself from starting to cry. She bites her lip, trying to swallow it back down – she can’t, won't, show weakness to Anya – but the tears sting her eyes and streak tracks of salt down her cheeks. All she was trying to do was be kind. It’s bad enough that they’ve all been taken away from their homes and families; shouldn’t they at least show kindness to each other?

Or is that the kind of weak, soft thing a magnolia blossom would say? Is she still too much of Nell to survive in this place?

“Fuck you,” says Monroe sharply, and Anya’s head snaps up. She’s as startled as Harper is.

“What did you say to me?” says Anya, who is almost too astonished to be rude.

“You heard me,” says Monroe defiantly, walking over towards them to stand beside Harper. Not in front of her, not shielding her, but right at her side. She takes Harper’s hand, and she stares squarely at Anya. “You think she’s weak because she likes pretty dresses?” she snorts. “You’re an idiot. Harper’s tougher than all of us. She’s tougher than anyone I’ve ever met. Sure as _hell_ tougher than me. She was kind to me when I got here. She talked to me. She made me feel safe. But nobody did that for her, Anya.  When she woke up she was by herself in a moldy shithole full of half-dead fish, and she thought she was going to die.  So show a little goddamn respect.  Harper’s the only one of us who had to survive in here alone.”

Anya doesn’t say anything, but cocks her head slightly, as if this is a point she hadn’t considered. She regards Harper thoughtfully for a long moment before turning around and going back to her bucket and cloth. But when Harper moves forward again, Anya doesn’t stop her. When Harper reaches up into the lining of her silk skirt and tears off two wide strips to soak in the cold water – they don’t have a spare cloth for Lexa’s wrists, but it might help reduce the fever to lower her body temperature there – Anya watches her with something approaching grudging respect.

She’s still not exactly warm, after that – nor is Lexa, who recovers a few days later – but Monroe has made her point effectively. They don’t have to be friends, but for now they’re a team. And they’re stronger together than apart.

Every night as Harper falls asleep in Monroe’s arms, she replays this conversation with a kind of baffled wonder. Harper has been defended before, but this is different. This isn’t like when her boy cousins would taunt her or pull her hair or make her cry and Granddaddy would come pull them aside to give them a stern talking-to about how it wasn’t proper for them to pick on girls. She was supposed to be grateful for this, she was supposed to smile at Granddaddy and say thank you, so she always did, but with a sick little feeling in her stomach like she got when she told a lie. Because she wasn’t really grateful. It wasn’t a compliment to have someone say you should be left alone because you were too weak to fight back, and she didn’t like pretending that it was.

But it’s different with Monroe. She’s protective of Harper, but in a way that makes her feel lovely and cherished and safe. She isn’t, and this is a crucial distinction, _defending her honor_ – one of those things boys are forever doing to magnolia-blossom girls.  But that’s not who Monroe is. She simply explains to Anya what she sees in Harper – what she _respects_ about Harper – and shows Anya and Lexa how to see it too.

Monroe is the first person in Harper’s whole life to cherish her not because she is fragile but because she is strong.

 _I love you,_ she thinks that night, as Monroe’s hands stroke her to that rush of pleasure and she kisses her with a passion so violent she thinks it might break her apart. _I love you, I love you._

* * *

It’s a month after Lexa’s arrival before the next girl shows up, and she changes everything.

Charlotte Cooper is only ten.  She’s never been away from her parents. She’s never spent a night by herself, and she is terrified.

When she first arrives, tossed unceremoniously by the men with guns onto the pile of sacking, it takes her a frighteningly long time to wake up. “They probably gave us all the same dose of chloroform,” says Monroe angrily. “She’s just a kid. They should have fucking known better. Christ, they could have _killed_ her.” She’s furious. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Monroe has already adopted the role of protector for this girl too.  But when Charlotte first wakes, in the cold darkness, smelling the salt air and the rotting fish, and she begins to cry, it’s Harper who consoles her.

“What’s your name?” she asks gently, stroking Charlotte’s hair out of her eyes.

“Charlotte,” she whimpers brokenly. “Charlotte Cooper. Where am I?”

“We don’t know, exactly,” says Harper. “We’re on a ship. We don’t know very much. We think we’re on the bottom level. Maybe a freighter, or a shipping barge. There aren’t many people, and the ones we see don’t wear uniforms. Where were you when they took you?”

“Norfolk,” sniffles Charlotte. “We were visiting my Nana.”

“I’m Harper,” says Harper. “And this is Monroe, and Anya and Lexa. Was there a very pretty woman in a red dress, with a very shiny car?” Charlotte nods. “We all got taken the same way,” says Harper. “We're in this together.  We’re going to keep you safe, and we’re going to get you home. That’s a promise.”

The Arbors are steely and cold, and Monroe looks like a street tough. But Harper, she trusts instantly.  Harper looks kind. So Charlotte sits up, sniffling and trembling, and she lets Harper wrap her arms around her, and this is what stops the tears. And it changes something fundamental between them – not just that they have a vulnerable little girl to protect, but that it’s Harper’s very softness that makes her strong. That makes her the one Charlotte can lean on. And the grudging respect in Anya and Lexa’s eyes grows, bit by bit, less grudging.

That night the four older girls do the only sensible thing to do – they pile all the bedrolls in the middle of the room, and they curl up around Charlotte, and they keep her close.  Harper holds Charlotte in her arms all night long, Monroe pressed up against her back with her arms around Harper’s waist. She strokes Charlotte’s hair and she murmurs comforting things in a low voice.

“Do you know any bedtime stories?” Charlotte asks her, and Harper thinks for a minute.

“Are you afraid of the dark?” she asks Charlotte suddenly, and Charlotte shakes her head. “Well, I was,” says Harper frankly. “I still am. And when I was little, my nursemaid used to rock me to sleep and she would say a poem to me that she said would help me be less afraid.”

“Will you tell it to me?” Charlotte asks in a tiny voice, and Harper nods.

> _“Still and silent, little girl_
> 
> _With sea-blue eyes and golden curls_
> 
> _With tearstained cheeks and trembling chin_
> 
> _Must keep the Dark from closing in_
> 
> _A lullaby, a fuzzy bear_
> 
> _Her mother in the rocking chair_
> 
> _Don’t tell her what it’s all about_
> 
> _Just help her keep the Darkness out_
> 
> _All young children feel alone_
> 
> _The light goes out, they’re on their own_
> 
> _But each soft voice that soothes a fear_
> 
> _Can keep the Dark from moving near_
> 
> _This is the secret of the old –_
> 
> _That all the stories she was told_
> 
> _And all the rhymes she used to say_
> 
> _Were games to keep the Dark away.”_

 

By the time she finishes, Charlotte is sound asleep.

* * *

There’s only one empty bedroll, sitting in the corner – six mattresses, five girls – and Harper knows someone else is coming.

The final prisoner. 

Who is she, this girl?  Where is the ship going, and where will they find her? What will happen when they do? Will this be the moment they’re finally all killed, or will something happen to bring some hope of escape?

Will this girl be the one who finally makes clear the mysterious tie between them that has led them all to this terrible place?

Nobody knows. But they want to be ready.

And Harper has an idea.

Monroe grew up around the Boston Irish, which means she could knock a man’s tooth out with her fist before she was twelve years old, and she knows her way around any kind of a knife. The Arbors are from Oregon - which Harper's daddy always said was a wilder place where the girls weren't very ladylike – and Anya's father, who was from someplace in Asia (Harper forgets where; no one had ever taught her about the world, not really, this wasn’t the kind of knowledge that sweet Southern wives really needed to have), taught his daughter a kind of fighting they do over there that Anya says can let you win fights even if you aren't the biggest. Anya knows how to do things like block a fist coming towards her face and flip Monroe onto her back when they wrestle. And she taught Lexa, who can do those things too.

But it’s Harper who has the secret skill they need the most. It’s Harper, for all her soft skin and white dresses, who’s the only one that can actually shoot a gun.

Harper grew up hunting with her daddy and there’s not one blessed thing about rifles she doesn’t know. She draws diagrams on the floor with a wet finger in the dusty grime, to show the girls how the pieces work and how they fit together. She takes broken scraps of saltwater-softened lumber from the pile in the corner and shows them each how to hold it over their shoulder, how to aim and fire.

In exchange, Monroe teaches all of them – even Charlotte – how to land a punch, and Anya shows them how to dodge one.

When the sixth girl comes, they’ll be ready to protect her. Ready for what happens next, whatever it might be.

They’re getting out of this together or they’ll die trying.

* * *

The last girl arrives in summer.

It was January when Harper was taken, and now it's very nearly July. It’s hot wherever the ship is, the cold winter sea breezes that kept the room fresh growing fainter and fainter. Harper has known no other world but this for five months.  She’s lost a great deal of weight, her soft plump curves flattening out somewhat so the beaded dress no longer hangs right. But it’s mostly tatters anyway, so she doesn’t put it on as much as she used to.  She has forgotten what it felt like to be Nell.  There's nothing left of her but Harper, all the way down to the bone.

They don’t sleep huddled together around Charlotte anymore, so they’ve spread back out to opposite sides of the cargo hold – Harper and Monroe in one corner, and the Arbor girls (who have adopted Charlotte as one of their own) flanking her on the other. Once she decides not to be frightened of them, Charlotte finds Anya and Lexa surprisingly loyal protectors. (“Where we come from, our women take care of each other,” Harper overhears Anya saying to Charlotte, as Lexa nods soberly at her side, and it’s the closest she’s ever felt to fond of them.)

Then Maya arrives.

Maya is nearly Harper's age but she’s even more frightened than little Charlotte was. She’s frightened the way Harper was when she first arrived, in fact. She’s terrified – pale and silent and tearful, afraid to speak, afraid to move even. She doesn’t trust the other girls. She’s afraid of everyone and it’s hard to blame her. The woman in red, after all, hadn’t looked a bit frightening.

Harper doesn’t know where it comes from, this passionately protective tenderness that swells up inside her when she looks at Maya’s tearstained face, but all she wants to do from the moment the girl opens her eyes is to hold her. There’s something inside her that _recognizes_ Maya, somehow – sees under her soft pink-and-white vulnerability an iron core that Maya doesn’t know is there yet.

Monroe was the one who gave that strength to Harper. Together, Harper decides, they will pass it on to Maya.

Maya is quiet and frightened, but she’s also clever, and it doesn’t take long for her to realize that the one remaining bedroll in the corner must be hers. She’s the last one. This means something might be about to happen.

But nothing does.

It’s the waiting that threatens to drive them all over the deep end. Charlotte is teary, Lexa is restless, Monroe and Anya pace back and forth. Harper tends to Maya. She asks her questions about her life, tries to keep the girl’s mind focused on normal things. Nothing too heavy with emotion or longing – she doesn’t ask about Maya’s family, where she lived, if she had a dog. She asks about small, everyday things. What was Maya’s favorite restaurant in San Francisco? Is the Golden Gate Bridge really as wonderful as everyone says? Has Maya ever gone across it? What’s her favorite book? Does she go to the pictures, which ones does she like the best? And it helps. She’s gentle and soothing, she strokes Maya’s hair and dries her tears.  Then she looks up and sees Monroe watching her, and the look on the girl’s face turns her heart upside-down. Monroe's eyes are wide with such a depth of tenderness and affection that her whole face is glowing, and Harper realizes that watching her tend to the frightened girls who need her has made Monroe love her even more deeply than she did before. Monroe’s not good at comforting; she’s brusque and direct and says what she thinks and she doesn’t know how to soothe the way Harper does. It’s extraordinary, thinks Harper, to be needed. She’s used to being decorative, she’s used to being talked about as though she’s not there. She’s not used to being _seen_ , like this.

Is it possible, she wonders with overwhelming astonishment, that it took being kidnapped and held hostage for nearly half a year for Nell Harper to realize who she really was?

It’s on Maya’s fourth night that the thing happens. She’s pulled her bedroll towards Harper and Monroe’s corner – they sleep together openly now, and they’re quiet only to avoid disturbing the others’ sleep; Harper feels no shame anymore. In the darkness, Harper hears the muffled sound of Maya’s soft weeping.

“Maya,” she whispers, sitting up in bed and holding out her hand to the girl. “Come here. Come to us.”

“I’m all right,” Maya sniffles a little.

“Come here,” says Monroe, gently and encouragingly, and finally Maya does. She picks up her bedroll and blanket and carries it over to their corner, where she makes her bed back up again a few inches from Harper.

“No, no,” says Harper. “Come _here_.” She pulls Maya into the middle, between her warm nearly-bared body and Monroe’s (Maya is shy and still sleeps in her silky dress) and wraps her arms around her. Monroe, on the other side, does the same. “We’re going to keep you safe,” whispers Harper, leaning her forehead close to Maya’s and brushing the stray locks out of her face. “We promise.”

“Promise,” echoes Monroe, pressing a kiss onto Maya’s hair.

And for the first time, Maya smiles.

* * *

 It's three weeks later when everything changes again, for the final time, and afterwards it's a blur.  The seventh girl, with her kind eyes.  The tall dark boy.  The guard uniforms.  The gunfire on the docks.  The faces of the men who had them captured.  The way the seventh girl led them out of the shadows to stand by her side and help rescue her friends and family.  Maya finding her courage, charging headlong into danger to help the woman they shot.  The way it feels to breathe real air again, and then finally - after it's all over - to step off the U.S.S. _Mount Weather_ and onto the dry land of New York - a place none of them have ever been.  There's a police station, where all their families are waiting, and their goodbyes are rushed and strange.   It's too bright in the police station, none of them can get used to the light.  Harper's head hurts and she feels a little dizzy and she's mortifyingly aware all of a sudden, as she watches the men in the police station staring, of how dirty and foul-smelling and bedraggled they all look.  In the dark, huddled all together, she hadn't minded.  But now she's Nell again, everyone keeps calling her Nell, and the girls have been separated from each other to give their statements about the chloroform and the woman in red and the cargo hold, and she hasn't been this far away from Monroe in so long that she begins to feel a little hysterical.  "Where is Monroe?" she asks the officer, but he doesn't know. 

They don't leave the police station until their families come for them, one by one.  Harper's mother and father rush towards her, smothering her in a frantic embrace, and she watches over Mama's shoulder as a beefy red-haired man with Monroe's stubborn jaw swings his daughter into his arms and ruffles her hair with enormous affection.  Monroe's father looks kinder than a mobster ought to look, and Harper wishes she could meet him.  But as Mama and Daddy finally pull back and release her so she can breathe, the wave of grateful love she felt when she first saw them begins to subside almost immediately.  Mama can't stop twittering about what a state Harper's hair is in and won't she be glad to get back home and put some real shampoo in it.  Daddy looks suspiciously at the Monroes as they pass by and Harper knows he can smell the criminal on them.  "Six months locked up with no company but a little ruffian like that?" Daddy says sympathetically.  "My poor baby girl.  My poor little magnolia blossom.  Let's get you home, where it's safe."

That's as long as it lasts, Harper's gratitude to be reunited with her parents again.  Ninety-four seconds, from the moment she first sees them until the moment Monroe passes Daddy and heads for the door.

"Monroe," she calls desperately after her, and the girl turns.  She rushes up to Monroe, wanting to fling her arms around her, but checks herself just in time.  There's something kind in Monroe's daddy's eyes that makes Harper wonder.  He seems to love his daughter very much, but also to understand her very well.  He pulls back ever so slightly to let Monroe and Harper have a bit of space, and he looks away and pretends not to listen. 

The Harpers do none of these things.  They clutch each other with concern and stare with naked, curious, judging eyes towards the unfeminine creature wearing _men's clothing_ for mercy's sake, who is standing unsettlingly close to their baby girl.

Harper doesn't know what to say.  There are so many people around, it's so noisy, it's so bright, her senses are jangling and it's all too much, and even though she knows it's a crazy thing to want, there's a part of her that wishes she was back in prison with Monroe, lying on the cold metal floor and breathing in the scent of seawater and old fish and the sweat of six girls, hungry and freezing but holding the girl she loves in her arms.

Harper wishes she had known the last time Monroe held her, touched her, kissed her, made her come, was the last time, so she could have committed it all to memory more carefully.  But no, that's a foolish thought.  It's all there.  It's all carved into her mind forever.  It's not something she will ever forget.

There are no words for Monroe.  There is nothing she can possibly say.  So she simply wraps her arms around her in a tight embrace - chaste enough to appease her parents but close enough that Monroe understands - and as she pulls away she tries to tell her with her eyes the thing she can't say now in the middle of this police station, in front of her mother.

_I love you._

Monroe's eyes fill with tears.

She understands.

Then, in a heartbeat, it's all over.

* * *

Harper lies awake on her frilly white bed, which is now too soft for her to sleep on, after six months on the floor, and too empty and quiet without the sounds of five other girls breathing, and she relives that last dreadful moment again and again.  Being Nell, after so many months of being Harper, feels like a different kind of prison.  It's cleaner, and the food is better, and at least she isn't cold (quite the contrary, in fact, it's July in Charleston and she's wilting from the heat).  But after "that terrible tragedy" - that's how everyone around her refers to it, "that terrible tragedy," in low tones full of both pity and gossipy delight -  everyone tiptoes around her like she's even more breakable than before.  "Don't exert yourself," chides Mama when Harper wants to go for a walk.  "Shouldn't you be in bed?" says Daddy at eight o'clock in the evening.  "She's still recovering," Harper overhears Grandmother Nell telling a neighbor, "she just isn't herself again yet." 

Well, that part's true.  If her true self is Nell, then no.  She is not herself.  She never will be again.  She is a Harper in Nell's clothing and her tight lace collars itch against her skin and being forced to sleep in stiff cotton nightgowns makes her miserable.

 _You have money,_ murmurs a voice inside her head.  _You're one of the wealthiest girls in the country._ And in South Carolina in 1922, the age of consent is sixteen.  So she's a woman, really.  A woman with money.  A woman who could walk downstairs and tell Daddy and Mama she was leaving and then go buy a train ticket to Boston and . . .

 _And what?_   hisses another voice.  And Harper realizes she doesn't know. 

She has no way to find Monroe.  She has no way to reach her.  She has no idea whether out here, in the light, in the real world, Monroe would even look twice at her.  Maybe there's another girl at home, somebody sophisticated and strong and interesting, like Monroe is, not somebody frightened and soft like Harper who sits obediently at tea and supper and church and speaks only when spoken to and answers once again to "Nell" and keeps her face a mask of polite interest while girls twitter at her in scandalized tones, longing for details of her "adventure," and boys refuse to let her get up from her chair to so much as get a glass of water without insisting, "Don't you trouble yourself, Miss Nell, after all you've been through, let me take care of that for you."

By the time August rolls into September, she wants to push them all in a lake.

* * *

The absolute worst part is the Fall Cotillion.

She tries her hardest to get out of it - pleads disinterest, headache, illness, even grits her teeth and plays the fragile little magnolia blossom, with a calculated swoon and everything.  But Mama and Grandmother Nell will not be dissuaded.  "You spend too much time alone," chides Mama, "you need to be around people," in that tone of of voice where Harper knows immediately that "people" means "boys."  But Harper has firmly declined every offer from every boy her mother shoved in front of her, and every eligible boy already has a date.

"She can't go to the cotillion by herself," whispers Grandmother Nell to Mama, in her most shocked voice.  Harper is lying on the sofa in Mama's bedroom, crinkling in taffeta, drowsy from the evening heat, staring up at the ceiling fan while the rest of the ladies bustle about and get ready.

"I can hear you," Harper points out matter-of-factly, which irritates her Grandmother.  She's tired of being a magnolia blossom, tired of being polite, and the Harper is beginning to seep through the mask labeled "Nell."  She's exhausted and annoyed and uncharacteristically blunt, and she hears Monroe's voice echoing in her mind - she always hears it, it never leaves her, but it's louder and clearer tonight - and finally she decides she's simply done.

"Now, Nell," chides Mama, "don't take that tone of voice with your grandmother."

"I'm not taking a tone," she replies.  "I'm stating a fact.  You're talking about me like I'm not in the room.  I can hear you.  I've got no interest in this cotillion, but you insisted I go.  So I'm going.  Look.  I'm wearing the right dress and everything.  I will go out in public, I will talk to people, I will drink iced tea, I will dance if there's anyone worth dancing with, though I cannot imagine there will be -"

"Nell!"

"And then I am coming home and going to bed.  That was our agreement.  I'm not scrounging up a boy at the last minute just to make you all feel more comfortable about me."

"You're sixteen now," says Mama.  "This is the age when the boys begin to look at you as a potential wife."

"I'm nobody's wife," says Harper, and she's not sure why it comes out so full of fury, she's not sure what she's angry about, but it bursts out of her with a violent forcefulness that startles Mama and Grandmother Nell and her aunts and everyone else in the room.  "Not now, not ever."

"Maybe she _should_ stay home," whispers Grandmother Nell to Mama.  "She's clearly not in her right mind."

"Go to hell," says Harper in a very polite voice, and rises from the couch to an eruption of scandalized whispers.  She straightens the rose-pink taffeta of her rustling skirts, smooths out her silky hair, and sails down the stairs.

Daddy's in his office, lit by the glow of a warm brass lamp, and she knocks on the door as she passes by.  He turns and looks up at her and smiles. 

"My little magnolia blossom," he says proudly, and she forces a smile back even though she wants to shout at him never to call her that again.

"How can I get at my money if I want it?" she asks him bluntly, and he stares at her, a little taken aback.

"Well now," he says uncertainly.  "I'm not sure . . . that's not really a topic -"

"It is my money though, isn't it?" she interrupts him.  "I mean it is legally mine."

"Well, yes, of course, though obviously it's waiting in the bank for now, until -"

"Until you sign it over to my future husband," she says.  "Then it won't be mine anymore."

"That's splitting hairs," says Daddy in a kindly voice.  "While you live with us, we'll take care of you.  And then when you get married, your husband will.  So whose name the money's in hardly matters.  You'll never want for a thing either way.  Anything you ask for, you can have it."

"It matters to me," she says firmly.  "And I want to know how I can get it."

"First National Bank of Charleston," says Daddy finally, staring at her like he's never seen her before in his life.  "What do you need money for?"

"I haven't decided yet," says Harper.  "I'm thinking of taking a trip.  Goodnight, Daddy."

And then she's out the door.

* * *

She did miss this, a little, down there in the dark of that ship.  Bits of it.  She missed the smell of the flowers in the lane, floating around her in the dark summer night.  She inhales deeply, breathing them in.  And she missed feeling pretty.  She likes this dress, it's her favorite.  She was far too thin for it when she first got home, but fresh air and real food have helped and she looks like her old self again, all white skin and soft curves and golden hair that glows like sunlight.  She walks alone towards the town hall, which is so near her house she can already hear the chatter of voices before she's even reached the end of the lane.  She takes a deep breath and steels herself.  She will not be able to make it through this evening without being forced by Mama and Grandmother Nell and the aunties - all of whom will be arriving shortly - to dance at least three times, with some sweaty awkward boy who can't keep his eyes off the swell of her breasts beneath the pink silk of her bodice.  Some boy who is looking at her body as though it's a thing that will someday belong to him, along with her hand and her money and her name.

She stops short on the town hall lawn, in the shadow of the magnolia trees, and she feels very nearly sick.

 _I can't go in,_ she thinks desperately, staring up at the wide open double doors where the crowd of merry youngsters dance and chatter away inside, their parents watching from the sidelines with great interest as the grand ritual plays out for the thousandth time.  This is how Daddy met Mama.  This is how Grandmother Nell met Grandfather Henry.  This is where they want Nell to find a match, too.

 _It's too late,_ she cries out wildly inside her mind.  _It's too late, I already found the only person I love, and then I lost her.  I don't know how to find her again, but wherever she is, it isn't here.  I won't find love here._

She feels claustrophobic, panicky.  She stands alone, in the shadows, watching the crowds pour in and out of the ballroom.  Nobody sees her.

Nobody except Molly Monroe has ever seen her.

She hears the band strike up a new song, and she closes her eyes.  It's a song she loves, but it's too much for her in this moment, in the moonlight on the grass, as she stares with dread at the future she can't run away from.  It's too close to what she's really feeling.

> _"Whenever skies look gray to me,_
> 
> _And trouble begins to brew,_
> 
> _Whenever the winter winds become too strong,_
> 
> _I concentrate on you . . ."_

"May I have this dance?" says a voice from the shadows behind her, and suddenly Harper can't breathe. 

She's afraid to turn around.  She's afraid that maybe she's finally lost her mind.  She hears that voice in her mind all day, every day, comforting her, consoling her, keeping her company.  Has she finally fallen over the edge into madness and somehow made it real?  If she turns around now, what will she see?  A vast expanse of empty green lawn, taunting her?

She closes her eyes.  She doesn't dare believe it.

"You're not real," she murmurs.  "This is just a dream.  The same dream as always."

"I missed you too," says the voice, and then there's an arm around her waist, and a sharp tang of woodsmoke and rosemary that she remembers from her eighteenth day inside the _Mount Weather_. The stink of fish and sweat had pushed out of her mind the memory of that first night, their heads pillowed together on Monroe's soft jacket.

Harper had forgotten the scent; the scent hadn't ever been in the dream before.

The smell of rosemary is how she finally knows that Monroe is real.

She turns around, and there she is.

They've never seen each other clean and properly dressed, and they both inhale sharply in delighted surprise.  Harper feels Monroe's eyes raking over her creamy white skin, the soft curves under her dress where her body has found its healthy roundness again, the gloss of her moonlit hair.  She, in turn, can't take her eyes off Monroe's crisp gray suit, perfectly tailored and spotless, the way her thick red hair waves back from her forehead, the way her squared shoulders beneath her impeccable jacket look as strong as Harper remembered.

 _" . . . oh, the light in your eyes when you surrender/_ _And once again our arms intertwine . . ."_ sings the band from inside the ballroom, and then she's inside Monroe's arms, on the grass in the moonlight, with the scent of magnolia blossoms, and they're dancing in the shadows.  Monroe is a perfect dancer, surprisingly graceful for someone who's been in so many fistfights, and it feels so right to be held by her this way.  It feels the way Harper always dreamed it would feel.

"I've been looking for you all over town," Monroe murmurs into her hair.  "I didn't know where you lived.  The woman at the hotel wouldn't give me your address but she said Nell Harper would surely be at the Fall Cotillion."

"I was going to come to Boston," Harper murmurs.  "I was going to come look for you."  Monroe's arm tightens around her waist.

"You're the only thing in the world that matters," she says softly.  "I have money, you have money, we can go anywhere we want to go.  But I was lost without you, Harper.  You're my strength, and my heart, and I can't live without you."

"Take me away," says Harper, who has never been more sure of anything in her life.  "My home is wherever you are."

"Mine too," says Monroe, and she kisses her.  And Harper doesn't care that a chorus of whispers has started up at the doorway, she doesn't care that people are watching Nell Harper on the town hall lawn, dancing with a girl in a suit.  She doesn't care that Mama is staring at her in horror or that Grandmother Nell has begun to feel faint.  All she cares about is the way Monroe's mouth feels on hers, like the world has finally swung back into its proper orbit.  Up is up and down is down again.  This is how it was always supposed to be, she just didn't know it.  But she knows now. 

Monroe kisses and kisses and kisses her, as they dance together under the moonlight.  Tomorrow there will be a trip to the bank and a pair of train tickets to somewhere and a new life beginning.  But for now, nothing else exists except the taste of Monroe's kiss on her mouth and her arm around her waist and the rosemary-woodsmoke scent of her skin.

"You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Monroe whispers.  Harper smiles.

"Well, this is my best dress," she says, but Monroe shakes her head. 

"No," she says.  "I don't mean just tonight."

And Harper rests her head on Monroe's shoulder, floating on a cloud of perfect happiness as the band plays on.

> _And so when wise men say to me_
> 
> _That love's young dream never comes true,_
> 
> _To prove that even wise men can be wrong,_
> 
> _I concentrate on you."_


End file.
